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According to Lacan, “jouissance” is a socially mandated feeling of living enjoyment, the lack of which engenders a guilt that serves, among other things, to keep the subject submitted to the status quo . . . does that sound right to the experts here? - If so, could this be considered a legitimate area of ideological overlap between Lacan and Foucault?

Just curious . . .

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — February 22, 2008 @ 5:26 pm

Jacques Alain Miller’s paper ‘The Paradigms of Jouissance’ in LacInk 17 looks at different versions of Lacan’s jouissance.
There’s reference to it at http://www.lacan.com/frameXVII2.htm

Comment by Chris Sands — February 22, 2008 @ 6:54 pm

jouissance is apolitical category:today this ideological manipiulatiopn of obscene jojouissance has entered a newstage.our politics is more and more directly the politics of jouissance concerned with ways of soliciting or controling and regulating jouissance.is not the entire opposition between the liberal/tolerant west and fundamental Islam condensed in the opposition between on the one hand ,a woman’s right to free sexuality,including the freedom to display/expose herself and provoke/disturb men ,and,on the other hand desperate male attempts to eradicate this threat or at least keep it under control?

Comment by hadi — February 23, 2008 @ 8:50 am

the superego aspect of today’s “nonrespective”hedonism(the constant provocation to which we are exposed ,enjoining us to go right to the end and explore all modes of jouissance)resides in the way permitted jouissance necessarily turns into obligatory jouissance.

Comment by hadi — February 23, 2008 @ 8:59 am

Hadi, with 184, in one sense jouissance is apolitical if we understand the symbolic as political, but with paranoia, don’t we see jouissance forced into the place of the Other and with psychosis, surely there’s also a politics of the real or a supplementing of the real???
With your image of desperate patriarchy, I wonder what happens in the case of the ‘fort da’ game. Surely no teasing, but also an insistence that the first Other (mother) is not a woman.
If there is a politics of the real, could it have to do with finding a way to include the desire that we see with ‘fort da’ when the game is imaginary, symbolic - and real?

Comment by Chris Sands — February 23, 2008 @ 4:37 pm

What’s ‘fort da”?

and arent these all just fancy, self-important ways of talking about good old fashioned sexual repression? or am i being to reductive?

Comment by braton fuzzledorf — February 23, 2008 @ 10:01 pm

I mean, you can generate a “politics-of” anything out of the symbolic soup of the contemporary ideological marketplace - after a while it just gets old.

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — February 23, 2008 @ 10:32 pm

184.jouissance is a political category.

Comment by hadi — February 24, 2008 @ 2:21 am

Braxton, ‘fort da’ is reference to Freud’s ‘now you see it now you don’t game’ and and there may be a different take on this game with psychosis, but what’s this about soup?
Hadi, that was interesting. It read 184 as - jouissance is (an) apolitical category, not jouissance is a political category … perhaps this is how political change happens, we see an ‘a’ before the political or Braxton’s cold soup.

Comment by Chris Sands — February 24, 2008 @ 7:11 am

“fort da”
In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Standard Edition, Vol. 18, pp. 14-15), Freud wrote:
This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner, under the bed, and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a business. As he did this he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out “o-o-o-o,” accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother and the writer of the present account were agreed in thinking that this was not a mere interjection but represented the German word “fort’” [gone]. I eventually realized that it was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys was to play “gone” with them. One day I made an observation which confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied around it. It never occurred to him to pull it along the floor behind him, for instance, and play at its being a carriage. What he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skillfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive “o-o-o-o.” He then pulled the reel again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful “da” [there]. This, then, was the complete gameódisappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was repeated untiringly as a game in itself, though there is no doubt that the greater pleasure was attached to the second act. The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related to the child’s great cultural achievement — the instinctual renunciation (that is, the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction) which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without protesting.

Comment by violet — February 24, 2008 @ 7:45 am

There’s so much presence with Freud’s text!

Comment by Chris Sands — February 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm

Hi dear Hadi! We should not forget to give the reference when we cite a passage from a work!!

Comment by Majid — February 25, 2008 @ 12:49 pm

that’s right, Majid….. who says jouissance is a political category? is 184 Zizek?

Comment by violet — February 25, 2008 @ 12:56 pm

hi Violet! Thank you for the passage from Freud! The concept of “fort/da” is also evident in the anal stage in which the child gains pleasure from controlling the waste and then letting it go.

Comment by Majid — February 25, 2008 @ 1:03 pm

Majid, no that’s Poo/ur

Comment by Chris Sands — February 25, 2008 @ 7:25 pm

Hi violet! Yes it’s Zizek in Parralax view.

Hi Chris! you are right I think; but don’t you think that there is a similarity? Can you tell me more about Poo/ur? I’ll be grateful!

Comment by Majid — February 26, 2008 @ 4:31 am

Majid, I think Lacan takes something from Dada sometimes, as well as Dada Freud. So perversely, I was profaning the serious business of fort da, which is in itself not without humour. My suggestion has more to with the likes of an interview with artist Wim Delvoye, referred to at http://www.lacan.com/frameXIX7.htm
Sorry.

Comment by Chris Sands — February 26, 2008 @ 4:54 pm

according to lacan, Master signifiers _which are without content_ represent the subject for other signifires,and we believe in the Master signifires because others are supposed to know their content.is not this due to the [in]famous beleife that after the casteration the phallic Thing is possesed by the “Other” and the “Other” is supposed to enjoy?is not this homologous to the fact that priests are supossed to know every thing about God because they are the “Other”to common peaple?

Comment by hadi — February 27, 2008 @ 12:09 pm

with 199:…because they are the “Other”to common people?

Comment by hadi — February 27, 2008 @ 12:14 pm

hadi - the Other is not suppose to enjoy…. and this is how Lacan says the Other - the analyst - is semblance

Comment by violet — February 28, 2008 @ 11:12 am

the Other of the pervert enjoys… the voyeur - Other of the pervert in the park looking at couples making love… he enjoys the fact that he can get caught and so provoke that the couple insults him, that they call the police… actually he enjoys
making the couple exhibitionists

Comment by violet — February 28, 2008 @ 2:22 pm

. . . and the couple in the park enjoys the thought of the pervert peering at them through the leaves - it’s evident in the indignation they feel at being spied upon. Indignation in general being among the most gratifying indulgences that otherness offers us, it’s no wonder they rely upon it to spice up their inescapably mundane sexual play.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — February 28, 2008 @ 4:03 pm

In a contemporary secular world, don’t think of preists as castrators so much as oases of submissive release from things like, precisely, the mandate of jouissance.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — February 28, 2008 @ 4:11 pm

both the couple that enjoys the thought of the voyeur peering at them through the leaves, and the voyeur that peers through the leaves , in that they account for the jouissance of the Other are perverts.

Comment by violet — February 29, 2008 @ 11:47 pm

But are they really perverted in any meaningful psychological sense? Or are they just doing what is to be expected? Is the jouissance here really much more than a pale attempt to transgress the boundaries imposed upon them by the social/symbolic order, which thereby - and only SOMEWHAT paradoxically - ensures and perpetuates their continued instrumental participation in the order? Wouldn’t we say, in Lacanian terms, that these “perversions” are really just futile gestures in the direction of the Real from which they have been, and will remain, permenantly exiled?

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 1, 2008 @ 12:09 pm

fuzzledorf - when we say “pervert” we are talking a psychoanalytic category, like neurotic, psychotic, pervert, and not moral values - Freud made this categories, and Lacan took it from there. In other languages , like Spanish there is this other word “PERVERSO” which we don’t have in English, an it seems better to not load the word with morals. There’s always some perversion involved with the making love, and who says it’s wrong…

Comment by violet — March 1, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

Well i agree it’s probably not wrong - and i do appreciate the difference between the moralist and psychoanalytic usages of the word - but the terminology seems a little antiquated . . . i mean, are we trying to preserve the analytic methods of Lacan, or merely talk the same way he did? In any case, i suppose it’s hardly worth debating - more interesting to determine what self-directed role these common “perversions” (if that’s what we are calling them) play on behalf of the agents involved. Is it a grasping at air with regards to the Real? Might it be a simple apolitical pleasure/diversion, or does it go deeper than that? Is, for instance, some kind of social/symbolic repression at work behind this particular mode of jouissance?

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 1, 2008 @ 5:39 pm

Braxton, there’s plenty of information here and elsewhere about perversion as a clinical structure and beyond that some writers like Zizek have looked at film, literature, politics etc to examine the implications of Lacanian clinical structures.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 1, 2008 @ 7:16 pm

you are so right, Chris Sands…….

Comment by violet — March 2, 2008 @ 4:21 am

okay,okay - wasn’t tying to test anybody’s patience - just looking for an interesting discussion to help me understand without having to sift through reams of obtuse literature. apologies.

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 2, 2008 @ 10:20 am

(BF) I think Lacan, psychoanalysis and Lacanian literature tend to be the opposite of quick fix, remedy or easy read. You need to do the work or you don’t, but there’s a lot of extraordinary work available on this site (’the Symptom’, papers by Jacques Alain Miler and others etc.)

Comment by Chris Sands — March 2, 2008 @ 1:24 pm

Fair enough, Chris - i’ve read some Zizek - it seems there’s a distinct formula to the way he interprets Lacan though, which traces back to his (Zizek’s) use of the concept of “Hegelian reversal” as a cornerstone - leading me to believe there might be other approaches, which i was hoping to tease out of those here - but perhaps this has more to do with the way his (Zizek’s again) lectures are presented in published form, to give them a unifying thread (another form of the ‘quick fix’ as you say) - it seems as though some of the Lacanian structures, once they have finally been adequately internalized, become almost ineffable, no?

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 3, 2008 @ 10:23 am

Zizek’s approach to Lacanian Psychoanalysis is not a wholly new one or one different from Lacan’s own; Zizek is Lacan everywhere. Zizek reads Lacan through popular culture. and of course there are traces of German Idealists including Hegel, Fichte and specially Schelling in works of Zizek. You may be amazed to find out that these philosophers have discussed pure Lacanian (psychoanalytical)topics two hundred years ago but indeed Lacan’s formulations are quite much more amazing!

Comment by Majid — March 3, 2008 @ 1:05 pm

BT - you seem to labour the point you want to make, but ‘ineffable’ suggests you find the work inaccessible but call it ineffable. Is this a ‘Hegelian reversal’? Surely an interest in psychoanalysis begins with some curiosity or the work isn’t interesting at all. Zizek highlights a political side of psychoanalysis, but many still saw (or see) Freud as subversive.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 3, 2008 @ 1:19 pm

Hmm . . . you seem also, by posting the same message twice, to belabor your point Chris (i kid, of course). Actually, i’m not sure what point it is you perceive me trying to make? I don’t imagine it comes as any great shock that certain expositions of Lacan’s work might be found innaccessible at certain points by those lesser minds among us who nonetheless have a relatively healthy interest and curiosity in psychoanalysis. Zizek (who’s work i actually find quite fascinating) notwithstanding, i must confess i find it suspect and perhaps a little frustrating that so few of Lacan’s disciples (who, interestingly and somewhat myopically, also seem to consider him the end-all be-all of psychoanalysis) are capable of presenting his ideas in anything like a coherent manner, and i can’t help but wonder if this is the result of a certain, as i said, “ineffability” which characterizes some of his structures, or merely a thinly veiled reluctance on the part of his students to allow the rest of the world into the heavily guarded academic fortress of his theoretical schema - coupled perhaps, in some cases and on their own part, with a certain lack of full grasp upon the material itself, which they then choose to mask under reams of turgid, maundering exegesis (i’m thinking in particular of some of Jaques Alain Milar’s papers here on this site - but perhaps, in those cases, it’s just a failure of the translation . . . )

In any case, WHY - on a site seemingly devoted in large part to the rather redundant cause of imbuing Lacan’s work with a distinctly sexy, postmodern chic, and on a message board ostensibly dedicated to discussions among individuals interested in and, to some extent, versed in that work - is there so much resistance to participation in a more basic discussion of the actual MEANING of fundamental Lacanian concepts such as “jouissance”, as well as an apparent lack of interest in the ways in which such concepts might interact with the thoughts and ideas of OTHER such chic, postmodern theorists as, say, Foucoult, or even (innaccessibility apparently being the gold-standard by which profundity is measured) someone like Derrida?

Just curious.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 4, 2008 @ 12:19 pm

according to Zizek “Being”is non-All but ther is “Nothing” beyond/outside it which makes it finite.but if we consider “Nothing”as a kind of being it shoud be included inside/within “Being”which makes it infinite.or Nothing is not a kind of being?pls comment on this.

Comment by hadi — March 4, 2008 @ 12:47 pm

Nothingness, as we conceive of it - or as a phenomenological “thing” - can fairly be said to have its own mode of “being”, at least in some sense (”substance”, after all, and in a manner of speaking, is the fundamental tautology of human experience). This works the same way as when we say, from an existential point of view, that “absence” is its own mode of “presence”. Again, these are ideas which, to some extent, defy expression - but i think what Zizek MAY be getting at is the way in which the metaphysical distinctions we sometimes make in the name of grasping our own place in the universe are actually all just different viewpoints upon the same fundamental “thing” - and that our formation of conceptual dichotomies such as “being”/”nothing”, while cognitively necessarry in their own right, must subsequently be subjected to a kind of “blurring” or “smearing” or “flattening” or “unfolding” process, if we are to ever hope to get a fuller picture of the “that/this” to which they refer.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 4, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

perhaps i should have said “primordial” instead of “fundamental” - but, again, perhaps not.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 4, 2008 @ 2:01 pm

We can include nothingness within the infinity if “being”, but only with a corresponding acknowledgement of the finitude of “being” as it is APART from nothingness. I admit, i’m hard pressed to fully unpack the similarity here, but this statement you (hadi) cite reminds me also of Zizek’s proposal of Woman as being the remainder of Man, while, at the same time, also being the defining limitation by which the “essence”(so to speak, i can’t recall his exact language) of Man is dominated. - These similarities are what i was referring to previously when i spoke of Zizek’s interpretive “formula”, though by no means do i intend that to be taken as a slight to the scope of his insight, which is quite profound.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 4, 2008 @ 3:15 pm

sorry, the first line on that last post should read: “we can include nothingness within the infinity OF being . . . “

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 4, 2008 @ 3:21 pm

I enjoyed the relativity (IF) in concern with your being, Braxton

Comment by alice — March 4, 2008 @ 9:18 pm

Braxton, clearly some conversations fit a university canteen, but this messageboard is quite limited in a conversational sense (it tends to happen in slow motion). If you have philosophical gripes, I’d recommend the nearest canteen, but what is the case with theory based on practice concerns that practice (in the first place). So being eminently dismissive suggests an underlying attitude to a practice (ie. psychoanalysis) - which is OK. but then we’re back to canteens again (and what I think Lacan called ‘a discourse of the university’)

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 5:44 am

“Nothing” is not a kind of “being” but a “non-being”; that’s why it is so essential for “being”. “Nothing” is a non-being surplus which sets the “being” in motion forever and ever. Just like the surplus “objet-petit(a)” which leaves the ego desiring forever and ever! “Being” is finitude without border, finitude in motion, infinite finitude. or to put it in Hegelian terms, “being” is always “becoming”.

p.s: Out there in the realm of the Real we can’t speak (of “being” and/or “non-being”); that’s where language comes short.

Comment by Majid — March 5, 2008 @ 9:10 am

Well, Majid - one thing that’s funny about this sort of talk is that we can disagree and still be saying the same things. Non-being is nothing and vice versa, but through it’s profound influence on being it becomes its own mode of substance (this is a kind of a “practical” metaphysics, which stringent followers of the German school tend to resist, because it gives the impression of concretizing the surplus - though that impression is largely a human error of perception), which leads us back to the fundamental experiential tautology wherein we can’t, as you rightfully point out, speak of “being and /or non-being” because they themselves are nothing, and in so BECOMING, join the “infinite finitude” of being.

The paradoxes are fun to play with, but once “semanticized” they either resolve themselves in error or persist in the wholly relative truthfullness of confusion.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 9:46 am

I don’t know Chris, my gripes - if that’s what they are - are, i think, more on the practical than the philosophical end of things. There is a purist streak among (perhaps only some) Lacanians that excludes their own freshly developed fearsome version of otherness in the form of those who don’t speak DIRECTLY to their learned conceptions of psychoanalysis. The result is a kind of tunnel-vision and a self-perpetuating innaccessibility surrounding Lacanian thought AND practice that serves the dual purpose of solipsizing the Lacanian psychoanalytic community and providing it with a pseudo-and all too often ineffectual-motivational fervor in the form of a self-conceived Marxist-style attitude of guerilla-psychology, as it were. This, apart from both co-opting and, in a sense, commodifying the unmistakable genius of Lacan’s work, also supresses it and ensures that its subsequent practical-theoretical heritage remains largely incestuous and stunted.

But maybe i’m just howling at the moon. Maybe the inadaptability of “pure psychoanalysis” to the “symbolic soup of the contemporary ideological marketplace” is as it should be. Maybe Lacan’s genius, like that of so many others, was destined only to inspire a church that deliberately spreads its message in an alienating way so as not to lose the self-congratulatory egoism by which it has gradually come to define itself.

This is not an attack on you or your site, only an expression of concern regarding the role, if any, that Lacanian thought will play in the future of real psychological practice. Will it ever touch in a pragmatic way the subjects/objects of its analytic rigor, or will it always be confined to classrooms, canteens, and a few scattered precariously-funded clinics?

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 10:28 am

majid- I disagree with your comment in that, “non-being” is itself a kind of being.we say :ther IS “Nothing” outside “Being”.so it seems that “Being” has a kind of dominance over “Nothing” and the difference between “Being” and “Nothing” is not a difference between two symmetrical entities but their relation is asymmetrical in that “Nothing” should be included inside/within “Being”, so consequently the difference between these two is not the differance between “Being” and “Nothing” but the difference is between “Being” and Itself(being)!!!

Comment by hadi — March 5, 2008 @ 10:38 am

Dear Braxton,content and form are not exactly matched with each other.the practical end of things will come one day after the revolution in the conent(by psychoanalysis),which does not necessarily involve a revolution in the ostensible form of things,has worked out its way through the form,then the conceptions will be DIRECTLY spoken with a revoulutionizing effect.this shows the noncoincidence of theory with practic.

Comment by hadi — March 5, 2008 @ 11:04 am

BF - you refer to a ‘pure psychology’ (and no doubt you’re referring to a ‘pure psychoanalysis’ and not an ‘applied psychoanalysis’) but despite a rhetoric this seems more like ‘pure anger’. If you’re posing a question, it seems to have to do with meaning or lack of meaning … but is desire best described or experienced in some way?

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 1:19 pm

Chris, either youre losing me, or i’m losing you. I didn’t refer to a ‘pure psychology’, i reffered to ‘pure psychoanalysis’, and meant it in the sense opposed to ‘psychotherapy’, which could, in an ideal Lacanian sense, conceivably but by no means necessarily extend to include ‘applied psychoanalysis’.

My anger - if it is there, and regardless of wether or not it is pure on any level - doesn’t, in and of itself, effect the validity (or lack thereof) of the critique either way. Where does the anger come from? Am i unpurely angry at the state of affairs i describe, or am i describing said state of affairs because i am purely angry and in search of an object for the anger? It’s an interesting question, but the answer (if there is one, or, for that matter, more than one) doesn’t justify or excuse the described state of affairs.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

We can and do defer questions of meaning or lack of meaning in perpetuity, and experience desire partially as a result. In describing desire we can attempt to identify the underlying drive (so description serves a purpose) yet the cost is the compounding of the unanswered questions of meaning/lack. However and on second thought, since those questions continue in infinite storms regardless, the cost is ultimately negligable (spitting into the ocean, as it were). So, to answer your question (i wasn’t clear wether or not it was supposed to be rhetorical): desire is niether “best” described nor experienced, it’s more of an evaluatively neutral fact of life.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 3:03 pm

B - In what sense is desire a fact of life?

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 4:21 pm

I find your comment (no 36) quite to the point Braxton.
Sometimes I think that ‘Lacanians’ cite Lacan, giving answers
as if they were ‘true’ when this is quite contrary to Lacan’s
teaching as i understand it. Miller particularly i can’t abide
as, to me, he takes the Master position.
The argument reminds me of Derrida’s ‘Du Tout’ in The Post Card.
Derrida calls the bluff of those present by speaking
of the underground, secret intersection of the schools, whereby
many analysts move to have a ’slice’ of an analysis by someone in
another school, while publically maintaining the ‘crucial difference’ between
their school and the others. Derrida himself is thought to be
the analysts of an analyst - he is very funny when he writes of this.
But this is something of the point - there are church-like elements
in any group - the reluctance to engage with any thinker who
Lacan did not authorise or who he critisised, strikes me
as the opposite of the free speech that Freud was aiming at practising.

Comment by Sol — March 5, 2008 @ 7:11 pm

Chris: I would say in the same human-phenomenological sense as belief or seperation.

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 8:02 pm

yes Lacanians don’t seem to be part of a marked tendency in the therapy world to ‘pick-and-mix’ and if there is something less ‘normative’ here, inevitably the work will surely be subject to attacks from many directions. I would also say that JA Miller has done a lot to take Lacan’s late work further. If this implies a shifting from Freudian to Joycean symptoms, there may well be differences in the Lacanian world.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 8:26 pm

Sol, 55 is in response to 53

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 8:31 pm

There’s an interesting parallel there, Sol, between the Derridian critique of art-talk and the tendency of some of the more school-oriented Lacanians to “enclose” psychoanalysis within what must necessarily still, and in any fairness, be considered a sketchy, rudimentary framework; especially given the role that their vernacular plays for them in that trend.

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 8:36 pm

BF (in response to 54) - then in what sense is ‘lack of desire’ a fact of life?
To imply that something happens may not be enough in many (human) contexts …

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 8:37 pm

BF - well, we were briefly online at the same time but it’s late and I’m going to have to take my vernacular to bed

Comment by Chris Sands — March 5, 2008 @ 8:47 pm

Initially, here, i think a “lack of desire” would either have to be a lack of awareness, an indifference in the place of a desire formerly held (like a diminished motivation or a depressive apathy), an active desire AGAINST something (like, if i said “I don’t want to drive”, thereby implying that “I have no desire to drive” or “I desire NOT to drive”), or a simple “i don’t care either way” reaction in regards to some new stimulus. With the exception of the first, these are all reactive phenomena distinct from desire, which seems like a more fundamental engine of human activity in a way that indifference, withdrawal, or resistance to ~ are not.

If, as in the first example, “lack of desire” is a lack of awareness, that might put it on the same phenomenological level as desire itself or belief, but without the motivational properties and therefore without the same level of “factness” as those other so-called facts of life.

Taking the notion of “lack of desire” as a “fact of life” (in the sense i evoked) strikes me as being, at the very least, far more contextually contingent than desire. Desire seems more like an emotional white noise, it’s like our cognitive legs - without it, humanity stops her constant continuing and becomes that much more vegetable and mineral.

But maybe there’s a sense of “lack of desire” which i’m overlooking?

PS - let me reiterate that i’m not attacking you, i hope you and your vernacular enjoy a lovely night’s rest

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 5, 2008 @ 10:47 pm

BF (thanks), Sol - If we are talking about ideas and an orthodoxy (church) then it’s hard not to talk about context these days and I suppose Derrida’s conversation with a group of psychoanalysts also contextualises a concern for where ideas come from. I think, in a Lacanian sense, lack of desire may (at the moment) have to do with the hot (but not so hot in the new forum) topic of commensuration, if a very dominant CBT turns desire and therapeutic relationships into terms which can be ‘easily’ evaluated. Alongside of a context that’s political in a mental health sense, but also personal if you’re looking for a way to get out of bed, an ‘orthodoxy’ struggles in any number of contexts. Alain Badiou is a philosopher who contextualises philosophy, but with Badiou, I think there’s little reference to the late Lacan of the sinthome. This is simply one instance, but I think you need to read divergence within what seems like an ‘orthodoxy’.
So beyond some kind of ‘university discussion’, don’t we come across something pressing? In my case, there’s geographical isolation and little chance to develop a vernacular, but I also come across a crippling orthodoxy, which has no regard (whatsoever) for psychoanalysis or contemporary art. In fact, where I live, an ‘effective orthodox’ has brought about a paralysis that’s been international news in past weeks.
Above, there’s mention of JAM’s style, but hasn’t this analyst done much to re-think a practice that’s either relevant to the contemporary world or not. I personally have difficulty with an insistence on ‘live sessions’ and this difficulty is very pressing in my isolated world, but I still see Lacanian opposition to dominant mental health theology as vitally important and symptomatic of a need to keep desire in therapy alive.
Could these ‘theoretical issues’ have to do with something that’s forever fading in a graph of desire sense? Clearly Lacanians are not averse to ‘losing the plot’, but we could look at what may be the case or what not be the case with sinthome and Klienian reparation? There are so many points of contact in the therapy world. There must be many ways to look at desire in therapy and the internet is limited, but surely we contextualize or feel free to personalize what we talk about, which is difficult. This is certainly ‘pas tout’.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 6, 2008 @ 5:59 am

Sorry to be too oxymoronic but what else can Language grant us?

47-”Nothing” can not be a “being” since it is those parts of the Real yet not been encoded inside the Symbolic. “Nothing” and “being” constitute the dialectics of the Real and the Symbolic. Indeed bearing in mind that “Being” has got a meaning “only” inside the Symbolic.

Comment by Majid — March 7, 2008 @ 11:32 am

Chris, i must confess i’m not entirely familiar with the concept of commensuration as it applies to psychoanalysis; however, listening to you write i can’t help but sense (as much as i hate to belabor a point ) traces of Foucoult . . .

In any case, your concerns about the evaluative techniques of the mainstream mental-health industry - not to mention said industry’s overall evolutionary misdirection - are entirely warranted. Indeed, alternative thrusts are desperately needed (as, of course, is “a way to get out of bed” in both the personal and metaphorical sense), but i can’t help but think that if you are relying on the rest of the world’s willingness to plod through the murky depths of arcane linguistic muddles like JAM’s papers in order for your movement to realize any lasting success, then you are doomed - and in such a case it will have been largely a self-defeat.

Granted, this is the human psyche we’re attempting to talk about, so it would be (and is, on the part of so many involved in therapy) hopelessly naive to expect simple answers and easy literature, but a certain minimal level of decipherability is always going to be necessarry if the Lacanian school (both it’s more orthodox and divergent components)ever hopes to have any lasting impact (and yes, i myself even hope for such an impact, despite the frustration). I appreciate the resistance to simplification and popularization, but i think, practically speaking and with full recognition of the cliche, there’s probably a need to find some middle ground . . . in spite of the overt reluctance of many Lacanians to pursue it.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 7, 2008 @ 12:45 pm

Chris: ps - that’s the end of my sermon.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 7, 2008 @ 12:49 pm

Majid, there’s certainly no need for YOU to apologize for the inevitable failure of the symbolic to breach the Real, but it’s important, i think, always to recall the extent to which that symbolic failure is, in fact, the very cornerstone of conceptual dichotomies like “nothing/being” and “symbolic/Real” - and that, therefore, beyond language and the limits of cognition (that is in the purely metaphysical context we are always trying/failing/trying-again to address) such distinctions perenially lose their usefullness/meaning as the “things” underlying them wash over, merge into, overlap and agitate one another . . .

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 7, 2008 @ 1:08 pm

Braxton, as for traces of Foucault, are you linking the ‘panopticon’ idea with all this talk of commensuration?
Otherwise (Sol), am still wondering about eclecticism in therapy, reference to Derrida and disdain for JAM’s writing shown above. If Derrida is surprised by Lacan’s reference to Freud’s ideas, it seems he may still be oblivious to Lacanian psychoanalysis and a theory of four discourses, for example (am not sure of the timing of the Derrida text). What does Lacan acknowledge with Freud? When most of psychoanalysis looks in the direction of a transference to the first Other, this is not the case with Lacan.
I wonder if eclecticism, Derrida in this instance and concern regarding JA Miller’s style, don’t all have to do with a certain ‘mastery’ and a discourse of the hysteric? I think JAM makes the point that the position of the analyst (or a discourse of the analyst) is now comprised by conditions compounded by forms of therapy that thrive in these conditions.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 8, 2008 @ 4:55 pm

66 - last line should be ‘compromised by conditions …’

Comment by Chris Sands — March 8, 2008 @ 5:00 pm

I just don’t like Miller. It’s hot and I’m tired and can’t rouse the energy to explain or examine
-but don’t want to ignore you either..
The “confrontation’ referred to was held in November 1977

Comment by Sol — March 9, 2008 @ 3:10 am

Chris: I was thinking more the Foucoult of Madness and Civilization - but id be indebted to you if you could give me a brief explanation of what the concept of commensuration in psychoanalysis actually refers to . . . then i might be able to better illustrate my point (if i in fact have one - which would depend on wether i’m guessing correctly about what you mean)

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 10, 2008 @ 8:28 pm

If you look at the forum, there are two references (’Paris Calling’ documents), but this reference to the effects of ‘evidence based practice’ in mainstream mental health services

Comment by Chris Sands — March 11, 2008 @ 3:53 am

Does anyone have any references to aphasic, mute or speechless patients
or theoretical discussion around this?
Thanks.

Comment by Sol — March 13, 2008 @ 7:30 am

Jakobson describes an aphasic, who because of metaphoric aphasia, couldn’t announce the adverb “no”, n–o, unles you would tell him “Say no”. He could respond: “No, I cannot say no…” showing the word, if dispossessed of its place of enunciation falls as a simple leftover and looses its metaphoric message value…

Comment by alice — March 13, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

Can someone post here the author(s)(?) that Zizek mentions at the end of Part V of the ecology video? Interested in reading some non-sentimental gulag stories…

Comment by lxlxlxl — March 15, 2008 @ 3:53 pm

lxlxlxl — You mean Donald Rumsfeldt? - George Bush’s Secretaty of Defence during the invasion of Irak?

Comment by alice — March 15, 2008 @ 8:50 pm

lxlxlxl and alice — Zizek also mentions Catherine Malabou and specifically her book on Hegel., with Derrida’s contribution to this book “The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic”

Comment by violet — March 16, 2008 @ 1:55 am

alice - I like your example with aphasic, very much…

Comment by violet — March 16, 2008 @ 3:08 pm

Thanks alice

Comment by Sol — March 18, 2008 @ 10:10 am

Does anyone have any references to aphasia
or speechless characters in text or film?
Thanks

Comment by Sol — March 22, 2008 @ 5:05 am

(Sol) the image of the stalker’s daughter in Tarkovsky’s film (’Stalker’) comes (immediately) to mind

Comment by Chris Sands — March 22, 2008 @ 10:29 am

yeah, there’s a Lacanian sense in which we’ve all been born without a mouth . . .

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 23, 2008 @ 5:59 pm

somewhere between a 2 dimensional spiral and a ciphered vacuum one can fantasize of finding the real

Comment by braxton fuzzledorf — March 23, 2008 @ 6:07 pm

I don’t think so braxton, with Lacan already the baby’s cry is a word — enough to say that the sound comes from a mouth and not from a snout, right?

Comment by alice — March 24, 2008 @ 11:50 am

True, but the baby/toddler/child/adult’s demand is never truly voiced. We are all condemned to a more profound, existential sort of silence by our dependency upon language and the symbolic.

Comment by Braxton Fuzzledorf — March 24, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

(B) but with Lacan, something demanded features at the start of therapy (as in a demand addressed to …) or with Massimo Recalcati in LacInk 30, demand is split between a need for care and a need for love. You seem to be saying something about demand and something about language.

Comment by Chris Sands — March 24, 2008 @ 7:28 pm

M-Other … the baby is hungry, demands to drink, nurses, satifies his/her hunger, and falls asleep. Not hungry anymore the asleep baby will however hallucinate the breast… (the lips move, as sucking) the breast has been separated from the body of the mother, from the mouth of the child - the child’s hunger is satisfied, but the demand is not. Says Lacan in Ecrits “it is between the breast and the mother that the separation takes place, tha